Been There Before
by thelonegunmenX
Summary: Ried confronts Prentiss on a habit she picked up from her brief stint among the dead.
1. Been There Before

I don't own anything; all I have to claim are the unidentified ideas. Yada yada, R&R, you know the drill, I'm assuming.

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><p>He stared at her all throughout the day, having made up his mind the day before to finally confront her. He was nervous, knowing from experience how painful the interaction would be, now matter which side you were on. He didn't want to get her in trouble, but surely Hotch must have noticed the changes already. The dazed look in her eyes, crumpled, gaunt appearance. Leaving the bullpen, he caught her arm, and slipped swiftly into one of the unused offices. She gave him a confused, scared look, visibly working out in her head how to remove herself from the confrontation. He took a deep breath, not knowing where to jump in. She interrupted his thought pattern for him.<p>

"Um, Reid, do you, well, need something?" She looked at him pointedly. She was already defensive and he hadn't even spoken yet. He took one more breath before closing his eyes and speaking in a soft, cracked voice, almost lost to the nearly empty room.

"I know what it looks like when someone is hurting, Emily" Her dark eyes widened for only a second. "I've been there, and I know how painful it is." He reached out to grab her arm, but she backed away quickly, nervously averting his gaze. He tried it again, this time catching hold of her wrist length sleeve when she stumbled slightly in her heels. Focusing too intently, he roughly pushed the fabric up to her elbow, carefully ignoring the horrified look on her face. Two pairs of eyes surveyed the punctured and bruised skin. He then met hers, staring into her eyes, constricted to nothing more than points in the dark fabric.

"Ried, I…" He stopped her, slipping a hand into her shaking palm.

"Emily, I can help you. We're all here for you. We love you." Her facial expression went quickly from fear to anger, her whole demeanor quickly rearranging itself.

"And what makes you so sure I need your help? I can handle it." Even her voice was shaking. Absently, she ran a nail against her jaw. Reid stared at the mark she left, remembering the deep, unabating itchiness that accompanied the hydromorphone he had been shooting up not too long ago. Suddenly she realized how she had given herself away.

"Just leave me alone, Spencer." She said fatigue mixed in with the anger darkening her voice. "I've got to go." She turned the door handle, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn't stop her. He stood in place, rooted to the spot.

"How long?" He asked.

"How long what?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Tell me, Emily. Maybe I can help." She whirled around, the anger suddenly refueled. He didn't even see her move before she had a forearm against his neck with his head resting against the wall.

"Maybe you should mind your own goddamn business, Reid!" She spat at him. With that, she rounded back to the door and was gone in just seconds. Watching her head quickly for the elevator, carefully avoiding the gaze of any people that still happened to be there, he tried to suppress the memories of his own addiction. He remembered the irritability, the distantness, as well as the need, the sole thing that kept him going till the end of the day.

Emily Prentiss rushed out of the building, quickly unlocking and slipping into her car. Fighting back the overwhelming urge to vomit, she rubbed sweat off of her face. Staring into her eyes in the rear view mirror, she felt her stomach clench with paranoia. Will he tell Hotch? No, he would never do that, would he? The pain in her head almost unbearable, she drove quickly back to her apartment. The anticipation was so great, she could think of nothing but the warm nothingness awaiting her. She almost did it right there in the parking lot, but in reality she couldn't risk being seen by anyone, Reid notwithstanding. She reached her flat in record time, parked, and nearly stumbled up the three flights of stairs to her fourth floor apartment. Halfway up, the nausea returned in a debilitating wave, but she managed to get past it. After finally reaching the door, her shaking hands fumbled with the key for several moments before she managed to wriggle it into the lock. Not even yet through the door, she fished around in her coat pocked for the bottle of tiny white pills. Drug store heroin, Dilaudid. Smiling fiercely simply at the repetition of the name in her head, she grabbed all of her kit from the kitchen table and sat down at her desk in the other corner of the room. She pulverized three of the two milligram pills, dissolved them in water in a stainless steel spoon, and soaked it into a ball of cotton. Hands now jittering uncontrollably, she could hardly manage to stick the needle into the filter. Once the rig was prepped, she investigated her left arm, deeply ashamed of the many punctures marring the surface. After having found a nearly suitable vein, she shoved in the needle, tingling with anticipation while plunging the solution into the blood. The rush hit instantly, nearly toppling her from the chair. As she felt the cool liquid travel through her blood, she sighed deeply, tilting her head back in relief as the euphoria swept over. She smiled to herself, reveling at how good it tasted in the throat, at how every muscle in her body spasmed intensely before relaxing. It was beautiful, though it was always this way when she hadn't had a chance to slam since the morning. Her head lolled as the deep nodding took over her body and mind, as she drifted in and out of consciousness.


	2. First Shot

I posted this comment already as a review, but i thought that i would just edit the page later on. I just want to expalin the ideas a bit. I chose dilaudid because after her stabbing, she would have been prescribed a regular pharm such as hydromorphone, becuase it is stronger than Vicodin yet less addictive orally than OxyContin. It is well known that while a shit drug orally, it is among the most addictive both nasally and intravenously. This is my just my take on what would happen to someone that has lost everything, and had nothing left to live for. I'm going to be jumping throught time, so more of it will be explained later. I'm sorry if it seems out of character, but to me, this is what could happen. In addition, I have very personal experience in the matter, and yes, I would say that I can see through the character's eyes just a bit. As per usual, I don't own anything. I really appreciate the reviews, and please keep them coming. I really thrive off of them. I hope that you enjoy, but if you don't, the criticism is very welcome.

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><p>Emily Prentiss was in a drug induced coma for six days while the stitches in her side began to heal and the team, her family, mourned her loss. She spent a week in rehab, working around the immense pain with the bit of morphine still flowing through her IV drip. They sent her off to Paris with strict instructions not to overdo it and a script for one hundred eighty eight mg Dilaudid. Walking out of the hospital for the first time to board a private jet commissioned by the Department of Defense to whisk her off to Europe, she had no idea that that piece of paper was the worst thing that could possibly happen to her.<p>

The night of her funeral, she met J.J. in Paris to pick up her new identities. By that point, she had already filled the scrip, and in fact had the bottle rattling around in her pocket as she walked off toward the Eiffel Tower. She ambled around for hours, ignoring the burning pain in her side and the worse pain of regret and guilt welling up through her heart to lodge in her throat. She stared up at the lights of the city, a city she had spent so much time in a lifetime ago, memories jumbled in her pain wracked mind. By the time she found a hotel at three in the morning, she could barely walk. She dragged herself up the stairs to her room and tossed her briefcase on the bed before collapsing right next to it. That first night she dug out that bottle she popped a single pill, as the doctor recommended.

As any well versed opiophile will tell you, Dilaudid has an atrocious peroral bioavailability at only 30%. Two days after arriving in Paris, she found herself pulverizing the small pill to snort through a one euro bill. After falling into a comfortable, sedated sleep for four hours, she awoke to pounding in her head and a massive pain in her side. She repeated the ritual once that night, and three times the night after, until a week to the day after she arrived, she was railing 40 mgs at a time just to numb the fire in her side and the guilt in her head.

When they tell you in school, stay away from drugs, kids, you usually listen, at least to the bit about needles. They say that once you touch a needle, there's no coming back from that. Emily didn't know how the rig found its way to briefcase through the blur of her dulled day ambling around the streets, but it did. Staring at the wrapped package, she fumbled for the bottle in her pocket. She understood the risks. Of course she wouldn't get addicted. Emily Prentiss went to Yale, she's an FBI agent. _An ex-FBI agent,_ she reminded herself. _I'm too smart for that. _She didn't _need _this, just like she didn't _need _to insufflate a tab and a half every time she got a chance. She didn't _need_ to think day and night about that beautiful, warm, fuzzy blur that was Dilaudid. And she certainly didn't _need_ to shoot up, safe in the cheapest apartment she had managed to find, sitting at a desk with her ankles crossed up on the table, all her kit waiting and ready to go. So when she slid the needle into a vein, perfectly with just a touch of beginner's luck, she didn't feel scared or apprehensive or just a touch guilty. _Because I simply want it, that's all._


End file.
